until i can answer yes to the cop who asks, is this your heart
among the ruins of your reflection?
i won't be a man, despite what my anatomy
insists.
it insists
that i overcome a sense of resistance when i move,
that i move
as long as i am able to move, and when i am unable
to move, that i stop.
it would be free and look like a bird, an actual bird
or a dollar folded into a bird, a dollar bird
in a dollar boat.
which is to say
i believe origami arrives
when we need it most.
i can't prove this but i can't prove
you're a good person though i suspect
you're a good person.
you who opened the door.
you who tipped your hat.
you who ran into the fire and carried
the fire safely out.
not looking to be popular-she is look-
ing to be a whole person," Shandler says.
"You don't care about being popular if
you've lost your twin sister." This more
emotionally textured plot, however, was
harder to hammer out within the estab-
lished Alloy framework. "'I want to be
O.K.' -it's not great motivation, it's not
a great drive," Shandler says. "It's hard to
put that into cover copy." The final form
of "Wish" might be characterized as
"The Lovely Bones" for kids, and Shan-
dler says that, compared with other Alloy
offerings, the new series "has more of a
literary bent, and some hopefulness and
wish fulfillment in an emotional way,
not in an 'I want that Gucci bag' way."
The book is certainly a teatjerker, though
there are also many, many descriptions
-Bob Hicok
of the characters' dresses, boots, and
skinny jeans.
The author of 'Wish" is Alexandra
Bullen, a twenty-seven-year-old gradu-
ate of New York University's drama-
writing program. It is her first novel, and
in August she spent a few days at the
Alloy offices with Shandler, Bank, and
another editor, Joelle Hobeika, figuring
out the story line of "Wish 2," which
Scholastic plans to publish in 2011.
Three weeks before the plotting meet-
ings, Shandler had e-mailed Bullen a
short characterization of the direction in
which the team had been thinking of
taking the book: 'What might happen
to a girl who says, I wish I had a different
life. And then she wakes up, and she ac-
tually has one." Bullen had replied, "I
love it! Such a great place to start! Can't
wait to come and hash it out with you
f"
guys.
Bullen arrived in the conference room
with a laptop and the kernel of an idea:
What if the girf s wish was really about
having different parents? The team bat-
ted around several ways of approaching
this theme, with the author taking notes.
What if the girl comes from a messed-
up but wealthy family and wants a sim-
pler life? Or what if she has a single
mom, whom she is hard on, because the
mom is hard on her? What ifher parents
forced the family to move all the time?
What if her mom was a famous some-
thing or other-always on a book tour or
the talk-show circuit-and the girl feels
that shè s expected to be a manager rather
than a daughter? Could the mom be a
conservative Dr. Laura figure who tries
out her theories on her reluctant daugh-
ter? Or maybe the mom had made some
mistakes in her own life, from which she
is trying to protect her daughter?
After a couple of hours, Bullen said,
"I have a crazy idea. What if she went
back in time and met her mom as a
younger woman, so we understand why
she's the way she is?" The team jumped
at this idea, and by early afternoon had
nailed down the rough outlines of the
book's three-act structure. Act I: A girl,
Hazel, who has grown up being bounced
around among foster families, decides, as
soon as she is eighteen, to track down
her birth mother. She finds a name,
Googles it, and discovers that her birth
mother is hosting a benefit in San Fran-
cisco. Unable to reach her any other way,
she flies to the city-where she gets a
dress from Posey, the magical dress-
maker-and shows up at the benefit,
only to discover that the woman she
seeks was killed in a car accident a week
earlier. Devastated by the news, Hazel
says that she wishes shè d had the chance
to get to know her mother. When she
wakes up the next morning, she discov-
ers that it is 1993, the year of her birth,
and shès in Marthàs Vineyard. Act II:
She gets a job on the farm of the woman
she believes to be her mother, who is
pregnant, apparently with her; she also
becomes friends with Katie, a girl her
own age, who is also working on the
farm. Midway into Act II-a pivotal
point in Alloy books-the pregnant
farm owner has a miscarriage, meaning
THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 19, 2009 67